On Nov. 8 the Board of Regents held its annual trust funds investment forum. This meeting has traditionally been an opportunity for students and faculty to express their opinions on where the UW System invests its nearly $450 million of trust funds.
That was not the case this year, however, because for the first time in recent history, nobody showed up.
In the past, student groups as well as individuals have come to the meeting to voice opinions and call for change in the UW System's investment choices. Student opinion played a role, for example, in the decision for the UW System to stop investing in corporations that do business in Sudan.
By failing to show up to the meeting, students and faculty forfeited an opportunity to have a say in where the system invests significant sums of money. Controversial companies such as
Halliburton are among those on the current investment list, yet no student organizations took advantage of the structured, professional platform to voice their concern.
The UW System Trust Office, however, seems to have picked up where the public and students failed. Through a policy it labels Socially Responsible Investing, the office has called on companies it invests in to establish policies to make them more humanitarian and environmentally friendly.
The office, for example, voted this year to recommend that Exxon Mobile Corporation disclose greenhouse gas emission from its products.
Students on the UW campus should continue the campus' history of strong activism. Activism, however, is more than protests and rallies. The chance to voice opinion about what companies get money is a powerful and rare opportunity and students need to take it.
